A Ghetto Violet | Page 4

he would not like to see
Gudule, his only answer was: "She must not give away the clasp of
little Viola's necklet." And but an hour before his death, he raised his
voice, and loudly called for "the letter." Nobody knew what letter.
"Gudule knows where it is," he said, with a gentle shake of his head.
Those were the last words he spoke.
Had the old man's eyes deceived him on the occasion of his last visit to
his son-in-law's house? No! For, setting aside the incident of the
missing pearls, the whole Ghetto could long since have told him that
the warning of the anonymous letter was not unfounded--for Gudule
was the wife of a gambler.
With the resistless impetuosity of a torrent released from its prison of
ice and snow, the old invincible disease had again overwhelmed its
victim. Gudule noticed the first signs of it when one day her husband
returned home from one of his business journeys earlier than he had
arranged. Gudule had not expected him.
"Why did you not come to meet me with the children?" he cried

peevishly; "do you begrudge me even that pleasure?"
"I begrudge you a pleasure?" Gudule ventured to remark, as she raised
her swimming eyes to his face.
"Why do you look at me so tearfully?" he almost shouted.
Ascher loved his wife, and when he saw the effect which his rough
words had produced, he tenderly embraced her. "Am I not right,
Gudule?" he said, "after a man has been working and slaving the
livelong week, don't you think he looks forward with longing eyes for
his dear children to welcome him at his door?"
At that moment Gudule felt the long latent suspicion revive in her that
her husband was not speaking the truth. As if written in characters of
fire, the words of that letter now came back to her memory; she knew
now what was the fate that awaited her and her children.
Thenceforward, all the characteristic tokens of a gambler's life, all the
vicissitudes which attend his unholy calling, followed close upon each
other in grim succession. Most marked was the disturbance which his
mental equilibrium was undergoing. Fits of gloomy despondency were
succeeded, with alarming rapidity, by periods of tumultuous exaltation.
One moment it would seem as though Gudule and the children were to
him the living embodiment of all that was precious and lovable, whilst
at other times he would regard them with sullen indifference. It soon
became evident to Gudule that her husband's affairs were in a very bad
way, for her housekeeping allowance no longer came to her with its
wonted regularity. But what grieved and alarmed her most, was the fact
that Ascher was openly neglecting every one of his religious duties. To
return home late on Friday night, long after sunset had ushered in the
Sabbath, was now a common practice. Once even it happened, that with
his clothes covered with dust, he came home from one of his business
tours on a Sabbath morning, when the people in holiday attire were
wending their way to the synagogue.
Nevertheless, not a sound of complaint escaped Gudule's lips. Hers was
one of those proud, sensitive natures, such as are to be met with among

all classes and amid all circumstances of life, in Ghetto and in secluded
village, no less than among the most favored ones of the earth. Had she
not cast to the winds the well-intentioned counsel given her in that
unsigned letter? Why then should she complain and lament, now that
the seed had borne fruit? She shrank from alluding before her husband
to the passion which day by day, nay, hour by hour, tightened its hold
upon him. She would have died sooner than permit the word "gambler"
to pass her lips. Besides, did not her eyes tell Ascher what she suffered?
Those very eyes were, according to Ascher, the cause of his rapid
journey along the road to ruin.
"Why do you look at me so, Gudule?" he would testily ask her, at the
slightest provocation.
Often when, as he explained, he had had "a specially good week," he
would bring home the costliest gifts for his children. Gudule, however,
made no use whatever of these trinkets, neither for herself nor for the
children. She put the things away in drawers and cupboards, and never
looked at them, more especially as she observed that, under some
pretext or another, Ascher generally took those glittering things away
again, "in order to exchange them for others," he said: as often as not
never replacing them at all.
"Gudule!" he said one day, when he happened to be in a particularly
good humor, "why do you let the key remain in the door of that bureau
where